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Copy 1 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT THE 



CELEBRATION 



ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 



OF THE 



INCORPORATION OF THE TOWN OF 



GRAFTON, MASS., 



APRIL 29, 1885. 



FRANK P. GOULDING 



A D D E E S S 



PKI.IVEKED AT THE 



CELEBRATION 



ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 



OF THE 



INCORPORATION OF THP: TOWN OF 



GRAFTON, MASS., 



APRIL 29, 1885. 



By FRANK p! GOULDING 



P R t: S S OF CHARLES HAMILTON, 

311 Main Street. 

18 8 6. 



- 1 ^- 

I 

0-' ^ 



q^ 



A D 1) R ESS. 



The love of kindred is a sentiment large enough to 
include and account for that reverence and affection which 
we feel for those of our ancestors whose forms vanished 
from earth long before our own time. That sentiment 
is not altogether dependent upon personal presence, nor 
upon the mutual exchange of kindly offices, but abides 
with us as a permanent and elementary principle of our 
nature. We find it impossible, therefore, to repress a 
feeling of deep and intimate concern in the history of a 
community of which our ancestors formed a part; and 
if, perchance, the characters with whom we are dealing 
were cast in a heroic mould, or were great and happy in 
their fortunes and achievements, they become in a 
peculiar sense, — 

" The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule 
Our spirits from their urns." 

One hundred and fifty years have now passed since 
the incorporation of this town. You select this as a fit- 
ting occasion to recall the memory of the fathers who 
laid the foundation of these institutions into which you 
were born. You would revert once more to the early 
scenes in which they played their part; would remem- 
ber their virtues; would sympathize with their patient 
toils, and admire the courage and fortitude with which 



they encountered the perils and endured the hardships 
of frontier life; would applaud the clearness with which 
they saw, and the dauntless resolution with which they 
maintained their rights; would recognize, with gratitude, 
their steady and unswerving devotion to the principles 
of civil liberty, and the constancy with which they per- 
severed, against every discouragement, in establishing 
those principles upon the secure basis of public educa- 
tion and public morality. But, upon this occasion, the 
historical theme which irresistibly attracts, at the same 
time, from obvious considerations, strongly repels me. 
The field has been so recently traversed and so amply 
covered, that, in attempting to recite anew any part of 
the familiar story, I shall appear to repeat a thrice-told 
tale. In 1835, at the centennial celebration of this event, 
an eminent native of the town skilfully gathered the 
scattered and scanty materials which constitute its origi- 
nal early history, and presented them in an address, 
which is at once the best authority upon the subject it 
treats of, and an able and statesmanlike survey, not only 
of the historical facts of the period covered, but also of 
the underlying forces and principles which made possi- 
ble the great progress it recorded. 

And, at the centennial celebration of the nation's birth, 
in 187(5, another son of the town reviewed the same 
ground, and, in fluent narrative and eloquent speech, 
brought down the history to the present time, and ren- 
dered superfluous any further treatment of the subject. 
And, later still, in his excellent history, composed for the 
county history, in 1879, Rev. Mr. Windsor told again the 



simple, but interesting story, and placed in permanent and 
easily accessible form all that can be known of the events 
which marked the dawn and early progress of civiliza- 
tion within the territory of Grafton. Besides these trea- 
tises there remain the fine historical discourse of Rev. Mr. 
Wilson, preached in 1846, covering the ecclesiastical 
history of the town, — no unimportant part of the early 
liistory of any Massachusetts town, which can boast a 
hundred years of life, — as well as the town history of 
Mr. Pierce. From these various essays in the annals of 
this venerable municipality you must have derived such 
familiarity with the initial steps and later advance of this 
community that I shall feel at liberty to select such parts 
of our history, without regard to consecutive narrative, 
as shall seem best to subserve the general purpose I have 
in view, to wit: to attemjDt some estimate of the character 
and environment of the early fathers of the town, and to 
assign some of the causes which made them what they 
were. But it may be of interest to repeat some portion 
of the history of the region prior to the settlement by 
the English. 

At what time tlie first white man's eye ever gazed 
upon, or the first white man's foot ever pressed this ter- 
ritory, abounding in " rich land and plenty of meadows," 
it is wholly impossible to tell. It certainly requires some 
exercise of the imagination to conceive that Governor 
Winthrop and his party, who, on January 27, 1631, as- 
cended a high rock only eight miles westerly of Water- 
town, " where they might see all of Neipnett and a very 
high hill due west about forty miles," could see from 



that point any part of the present territory of Grafton ; 
and as for tlie supposition that the company of English 
who, in 1035, emigrated from Massachusetts Bay to Con- 
necticut, traversed this territory, the probabilities are 
strongly against it. For the road to Connecticut, soon 
after existing, certainly lay to the north, though near the 
territory of Hassanamesitt, and passed north of Lake 
Quinsigamond, and there is little reason to suppose that, 
when that road was established, a new trail was struck 
out, instead of following the route of the first explorers. 
But, however that may be, the territory emerges out of 
the darkness of barbarism into the view of history many 
years before its corporate name was conferred upon it, 
in honor of the second Duke of Grafton. In the middle 
of the preceding century, when the royal grandfather of 
that nobleman was skulking, crownless, on the continent 
of Europe, and before he had formed his scandalous 
alliance with the beautiful but profligate Barbara Villiers, 
Duchess of Cleveland, who was our namesake's grand- 
mother, and while the imperial sceptre of England was 
held in the firm grasp of Oliver Cromwell, the general 
court of the province, on the petition of Eliot, set apart 
the territory of Hassanamesitt for the use of the 
Indians. Here was formed the third of the towns of the 
praying or Christian Indians, Natick and Pakemitt or 
Punkapoag (a part of Stoughton) being the first two; 
and here, in 1071, was organized the second Indian 
church. Ui^on the organization of the church, a meet- 
ing-liouse was erected, the site of which, near the old 
Indian burying-ground, in the vicinity of Mr. Frederick 



Jourdan's place, is still pointed out. A school was also 
established, where youth were educated to preach the 
Gospel to the Indians in the neighboring towns. Of 
course the services of the church were conducted in the 
Indian language, and there is ample proof in the writings 
of Eliot, as well as in those of Major Gookin, the Indian 
commissioner of those days, that, under the dusky skin 
of those primitive congregations, lurked traits of human 
nature common to all complexions. I cannot stop to 
give more than a single example of the numerous shrewd 
and difficult questions which his Indian disciples put to 
the pious Mr. Eliot. In his letters to the corporation es- 
tablished in London for the propagation of the Gospel 
among the Indians, he gives, in great abundance, exam- 
ples of these queries ; but he does not give his answer to 
the following, among others : — 

" If God made hell in one of the six days, why did 
God make hell before Adam sinned?" 

Gookin says of these Indians, whom he saw attending 
upon the preaching in the churches: "And for my part 
I have no doubt, but am fully satisfied, according to the 
judgment of charity, that divers of them do fear God 
and are believers; but yet I will not deny but that there 
may be some hypocrites that profess religion and yet are 
not sound-hearted. But things that are secret belong 
to God, and things that are revealed unto us and onr 
children." 

Wattascompanum, the chief ruler of the whole Mp- 
muck country, resided here. He was said to be "a 
grave and pious man." It is propably no impeachment 



8 

of his gravity or piety that he was executed in Boston 
in June, 1G77. For his crime was that he had been in- 
duced or forced to join the party of his countrymen in 
a desperate and futile attempt to drive from their an- 
cient domain the ever-encroaching pale-faces, in whose 
insidious advance the prophetic souls of the natives 
read the doom of their own race. And popular feeling 
ran so high against the Indians at the close of that san- 
guinary war, that small measure of justice was likely to 
be meted out to a native who had yielded to the bland- 
ishments or threats of the foe. 

In proof that these obscure natives who once occupied 
this vicinity were not destitute of all the amenities of 
civilized life, I must not omit to mention that here, tw^o 
hundred and fifteen years ago, occurred the first seizure 
of liquor in this county, under process of law, of which 
I have discovered any record. It appears that Petavit, 
otherwise called Robin, was one of the magistrates or 
rulers here at Hassanamesitt, and he was, evidently, a 
magistrate not easily deterred from the performance of 
his ofiicial duty. Major Gookin gives an account of the 
seizure of the liquor, as follows : " I remember sundry 
years since a Sagamore that lived up in the inland coun- 
try came to Hassanamesitt, and brought with him a 
rundlett of strong liquor — [it was more than three per 
cent, alcohol, and could not be palmed ofl' for Schenk 
beer], and, lodging in his house, Petavit, in the morn, 
sent for the constable, and ordered him, and, according 
to law, seized the rundlett of liquors. At which act the 
Sagamore drew a long knife and stood with his foot on 



9 

the rundlett, daring any to seize it. But Petavit there- 
upon rose up and drew his knife, and set his foot also to 
the rundlett, and commanded the constable to do his 
office. And the Sagamore — " 

Here the ancient manuscript breaks off, like a serial 
novel, in the very crisis of a thrilling scene. We see a 
sudden flash of long knives in the morning sun, and the 
curtain falls. We shall never know with certainty what 
the issue was. But, considering the divinity that doth 
hedge a magistrate, and the dauntless and resolute temper 
of Mr. Justice Petavit alias Eobin, I hasten to assure 
you that, in my opinion, the Sagamore from the inland 
country, after growling out sundry phrases in the Indian 
dialect, not strictly in accordance with the discipline of 
the church then established at Hassanamesitt, restored 
his long knife to his belt, removed his moccason from 
the rundlett, and yielded to the inevitable. 

The war with King Philip was disastrous to the prom- 
ising enterprise of bringing the ^N^ipmucks under Eng- 
lish and Christian influences, and upon no part of the 
extended and undefined domain of that people did it fall 
more fatally than upon Hassanamesitt. Two engage- 
ments were fought in this territory,— one not certainly 
located, and the other on Keith Hill. The first engage- 
ment resulted in a repulse of the company of English un- 
der Capt. Henchman, with a loss of two of his men. Mr. 
Brigham says, on the authority of the Gookin manu- 
script, published by the American Antiquarian Society, 
tliat upon the return of the English the next morning to 
the scene of the conflict, they discovered the heads of 



10 

their two men who had fallen in the attack placed on 
crotched poles before the wigwam, and facing each 
other. But, as given in a note to Drake's edition of 
Hubbard's narrative, Gookin's account of it is as fol- 
lows : " Capt. Henchman told me he judged several of 
the Enemy were slain in the wigwam, but the certainty 
is not known; but it was certain he lost two of his men, 
whereof his Lieutenant was one, Philij) Curtice of Rox- 
bury, a stout man. His Hands they cut off and placed 
upon a crotched Pole at the Wigwam Door, faced each 
other, which was seen a few days after." It may not be 
of much importance, but if the note in Drake's Hubbard 
is authentic in its citation of General Gookin's manu- 
script, it would appear certain it was the hands of the 
stout (^. e. valiant) Lieut. Curtice, and not the heads of 
the slain, which were the subject of the ghastly humor 
of the savages. There is some confusion and contradic- 
tion in the original authorities respecting the battle on 

• 

Keith Hill. According to Hubbard it occurred on May 
6, and according to Drake, on May 5, 1676. The Eng- 
lish were accompanied by some Natick Indian allies, 
and these allies came upon the hostiles who were pursu- 
ing a bear. They did not perceive at first that the Na- 
tick Indians were not of their own party, which gave 
the English some advantage. From eleven to sixteen 
Indians were slain. Dr. Mather says "our Forces had 
probably destroyed many more of them had not an Eng- 
lishman unhappily sounded a Trumpet, whereby the ene- 
my had notice to escape."* 

* Mather, Brief Hist., 143. This was the first time the Natick Iiidiaus 
were employed in any such number by the Government. — Drake, 257. 



11 

But while the devastation of battle cannot be said to 
have swept the place with special violence, in other 
ways the desolate track of war was left deeply imprinted 
on its soil. For, through the intrigue and force of the 
hostile savages, the little Indian town whose bright 
promise had filled the inspired Eliot, and the resolute, 
but humane Gookiii, with such high hopes, was com- 
pletely broken up and dispersed. The church and school 
were never rehabilitated, and only a few of the surviving 
natives, after an interval of many years, straggled back 
to the desolate scenes of the old settlement, and took up 
again their abode on the land of their fathers. 

In 1718, a single white man had acquired title to some 
lands in the town, and in 1727-8, the title to the whole 
original territory of Hassanamesitt resided in seven 
individuals, who were descendants of the original native 
proprietors under the reservation of 1654, and in nine 
English families, who, under permission of the general 
court, had jDurchased lands and settled here. In that 
year was granted by the general court the petition of 
forty English families, preferred some time before, to 
purchase the entire reservation of 7500 acres from the 
Indians, with certain restrictions. And, thereupon, a 
deed was given, dated March 19, 1727, old style, and it 
is executed by the seven proprietors and the husband of 
one of them. It reserves the previous grants to the ear- 
lier white proprietors, and to the Indian grantors an 
equal dividend of land with each of the grantees, and one 
hundred acres besides for the use of the Indians. It is in 
the nature of a strict entailment, for it is, by its terms, a 



12 

grant for the settlement of forty English families of the 
petitioners or their posterity, and no others. By an act 
of the general court, passed at the same time, certain 
conditions were coupled with the grant, the most im])or- 
tant of which were, — 

That within the space of three years they build and 
furnish a meeting-house for the instruction as well of 
the Indians as English children; that they settle a 
learned Orthodox minister to preach the gospel to them, 
and constantly maintain and duly support a minister 
and schoolmaster among them, and all this without 
charge to the Indians. 

The expense of building the meeting-house and 
school-house was imposed, by the same act, four-fifths 
u])on the purchasers and one-fifth on the prior English 
settlers, who were likewise required to contribute to the 
maintenance of the minister and schoolmaster. The 
English purchasers under this deed immediately pro- 
ceeded to execute its conditions, and, almost before the 
ink was dry upon the parchment, and months before it 
was recorded, the proprietors made provision for the lo- 
cation of the meeting-house and school-house, and only 
a little later began the allotment of lands, and as early 
as 1730, the meeting-house was completed, and a large 
portion of the forty families had removed here, and, in 
the following year, the church was regularly organized 
and a minister duly installed. 

Although the day we celebrate, April 18-29, 1735, is 
the date of the legal incorporation of the inhabitants 
with the powers and privileges of a town, the true era 



13 

of the permanent settlement of the place by the English 
must be referred to the years 1730 or 1731. AVe have 
now reached the period when first came upon this scene 
the men and women by whose characters and deeds the 
first bias and direction was given to the history of this 
community. There is a certain unity and individuality 
of type belonging to every community, if we only had 
the art to discover it. And it will be found to be a re- 
production of the type of character which predominated 
in the leading founders of the community. Of course 
there will be no community without concurrence of sen- 
timent, and the masses will finally concur with the minds 
of the strongest and most positive cast of character. 
The first settlers of a town, surviving for a generation, 
will generally set the current of popular thought and 
feeling, and establish the polity of that town for genera- 
tions to come. 

In that view, and in all views, it will be of interest to 
inquire who these emigrants were; what they did and 
what they aimed to do; what they thought; what they 
hoped; what they beheved; and, in short, what manner 
of men and women they were. It will be of interest to 
inquire what were some of the causes which enabled 
them to establish so goodly a heritage for their children, 
and to instil principles into the minds and hearts of their 
successors, which made of them heroes in their turn, and 
enabled them, in common with the inhabitants of other 
towns and States, to set examples of wisdom in counsel 
and courage in action, not surpassed by anything in the 
annals of man. 



14 

They were forty English families, who, with the nine 
who had but a short time preceded them, made up about 
fifty families. Most of them, perhaps nearly all, were 
born in the province, and were, therefore. Englishmen 
in the sense that they were born of English parentage 
in the English provinces of Massachusetts Bay and Ply- 
mouth. If I should repeat their names many of you 
would hear your own names, and I should probably 
name few, if any, who have not some lineal descendant 
within sound of my voice. They came unheralded by 
any noise of trumpets, blazon of fireworks, or other 
demonstration of human interest. When their creaking 
carts, loaded with the scanty supply of furniture which 
was all-sufiicient for the simple wants of their lives, 
rolled slowly up these hills and into these valleys, guid- 
ed by marked trees through the primeval forests, with- 
out doubt the wolves and bears regarded the invasion as 
very important and revolutionary, and the owls peered 
down at night upon the fires of the settlers with looks 
of ominous conjecture. 

But the human owls, seated in the high places of 
England, could not see so far, and had no idea of what 
was taking place here, and in some hundred other places 
where the like things were transpiring. Outside the 
few towns whence they came (Sudbury, Concord, Wen- 
ham, Stow, Mai'lboro), the event had absolutely no sig- 
nificance. When three or four years later the town was 
incorporated and christened with an English name. Gov. 
Belcher may have mentioned, in a letter to the Duke of 
Grafton, that he had named a little township after him 



15 

up in the woods of central Massachusetts Bay, and his 
grace may have jocosely told it to his friend, Sir Robert 
AValpole, the prime minister, of whose son Horace, the 
great letter-writer, the Duke of Grafton was the god- 
father. There is a remote possibility that the king him- 
self, the " snuffy old drone from the German hive," may 
have mentioned it to the Duchess of Kendall as an item 
of news from the distant province. But the advent of 
our fathers to these fields had about as much signifi- 
cance to the people of England, who supposed they 
themselves were making the history of the time, as the 
movements of a nomad tribe in central Asia for a change 
of pasturage would have to us to-day. l^ov have the 
circumstances of their coming attracted the attention of 
mankind since. The poet and the orator have not found 
in their special history a theme worthy their efi'orts. They 
did not flee from religious or political persecution, nor 
traverse wide and stormy seas to find, on a desolate 
coast, an asylum in which to worship God according to 
the dictates of their own conscience. At the end of the 
first third of the eighteenth century, religious persecu- 
tion of protestants had ceased in England, and the first 
settlers in this town were in full sympathy and entire 
accord with the people of the communities they left, 
both in politics and religion. If they endured hardships, 
they endured them in common with the early settlers of 
one hundred and twenty-five other towns in the prov- 
ince, settled and incorporated before ours. I shall not, 
therefore, claim that these early settlers of Hassaname- 
sitt are to be selected and set on any pedestal over the 



16 

heads of the primit'ne inhabitants of other towns. The 
greatness I claim for them they shared in common Avith 
many other similar communities of the same race and 
time, and it is sufficient glory that they are eminent 
among equals. But it detracts nothing from the intrin- 
sic interest of their characters that the chief features 
they present are repeated in a hundred other communi- 
ties. It detracts nothing from the importance of the 
experience they went through that it is not dissimilar to 
that of other neighboring peoples who settled other 
towns. The fact is, representative constitutional gov- 
ernment was first invented and put into practical opera- 
tion in this province, and it first manifested itself in the 
little autonomies of the towns. It is the people of one 
of these towns to which I would call your attention, and 
one where I believe will be found a remarkably pure and 
jierfect type of the kind of communities which were then 
taking root everywhere in New England. They were 
representative ^N^ew Englanders of the first half of the 
eighteenth century, and as such were enacting the most 
important history which was then transpiring on this 
round earth. Indeed, what human interest attaches to 
the quarrels of Walpole and Bolingbroke, or to the cor- 
rupt sway of the former after his full accession to power; 
to the history of the South-sea Bubble; to the intrigues 
and uprisings of the exiled Stuarts to regain their an- 
cient throne; to the petty wars of the first Georges, or 
to the endless plots and counterplots of whigs and tories, 
as compared with the scenes which were unfolding on 
this continent, and mainly within these old provinces, 



17 

now Massachusetts, from 1720 to 1789 ? The men and 
women who came to Grafton to settle were, like then- 
neighbors, the heirs and successors of those heroic men 
and women who, in the preceding century, had encoun- 
tered the first perils attendant on establishing a foothold 
for civilization on this continent. 

They had drunk deep of the spirit of the great conflict 
with the Stuarts, which ended with the revolution of 
1688, whereby the liberties of Protestant Englishmen 
everywhere, as they believed, were forever established. 
In the first place, they were men of eminently sound, 
practical common sense. You cannot open a page of 
their records, or trace the faded leaves of the church pro- 
ceedings without receiving the impression at the outset 
and carrying it with you to the end, that first of all here 
was a race of men perfectly sound-minded, level-headed, 
and intent upon the practical aifairs of life. This Saxon 
good sense and business capacity is the chief feature of 
their character, subordinating all others. I know it is 
common to ascribe to colonial settlers of pre-revolution- 
ary days, and to these our fathers, as the predominant 
trait of their characters, devotion to religion. I do not 
dissent from the estimate which gives that element a 
prominent and controlling place. But in rehgious zeal 
they have been surpassed by many races. I believe our 
o-ood friends the Catholics of the Irish race have, on a 
thousand fields, shown a devotion to the faith of their 
fathers as great as any the early settlers of this country 
ever displayed. And Spaniards and Frenchmen and 
Netherlanders and Germans and Turks and Africans 



18 

have, in all times, displayed a zeal which would rival 
and eclipse that of our fathers who settled here. When 
Mr. Wilson in the excellfent discourse I before referred 
to says that these "grave pioneers, cherishing the same 
religious zeal which characterized the primitive colonists 
of New England, made it their first care to provide for 
the worship of God; that their first vote at their first 
meeting relates to the selection of a proper situation for 
the house of prayer," he tells but half the story, and the 
impression conveyed is misleading. They do first attend 
to the building of a meeting-house. The fact is so. 
But it is also a fact that precisely that was the first con- 
dition in their deed, to wit: that they complete a meet- 
ing-house in three years. Their whole title depended 
upon that strict condition. Like business men, therefore, 
they set about doing the thing necessary to be done at 
once to prevent a forfeiture. It was an act most char- 
acteristic. But it was characteristic of sensible men of 
affairs, who exactly understood the nature of their grant, 
and went about complying with its conditions. It was a 
practical business transaction, and the record of the sec- 
ond meeting of the proprietors at the house of Nehemiah 
How, here in Hassanamesitt, on April 19-30, 1728, one 
hundred and fifty-seven years ago to-morrow, when they 
adjourned once and again, and examined. and re-exam- 
ined the proposed sites and shifted from one to the other 
until, after mature consideration, they were satisfied 
that the location would be "accommodable," furnishes 
a strong illustration of the very trait of character I am 
now insisting on, a sturdy practical sense, the faculty 



19 

to adapt means to ends. I should be sorry to be mis- 
understood. These pioneers, as a general thing were 
professors of, and profound believers in, religion. The 
conditions on which their grant was made undoubtedly 
received their hearty concurrence. But none of them 
were religious zealots, and they were not all of them 
saints, and they knew their own hearts too well to pre- 
tend to be, and neither they nor the general court felt it 
to be safe to trust the institution and maintenance of re- 
ligious worship to anything less secure than the express 
and rigid condition of the deed itself. The policy of 
maintaining the ordinances of religion, as well as public 
education, was the settled policy of the provinces, and 
these emigrants believed in it. There was nothing im- 
pulsive or sensational in their conduct, but all was well 
considered, deliberate, and eminently worldly wise. 

They were, moreover, an industrious people. They 
came here as a chief end to better their material wealth ; 
to get on in life.* Mr. Brigham has noted at how extrav- 
agant an estimate they held their lands, and how they 
gloried in the idea that they should leave so valuable an 
inheritance to their children. He reckons ill who leaves 
out of the account of the early Kew England settlers 
the fact that they were intent upon honest gain. They 
desired and expected to increase their stores, and to ac- 
quire moderate independence. Love of money is said to 
be the root of all evil, but the hope of acquiring it has 
sustained many brave hearts in the midst of trials. The 

* See curious pamphlet on New England, by Rev. Iligginson ; 1 Mass. 

Hist. Coll., First Series, 117. 



20 

early settlers in this town, like most of their contempo- 
raries, had a dim consciousness of the coming greatness 
of this country. Of course, they knew nothing of the 
vast resources that lay slumbering in the heart of the 
continent, and had no correct notion of the real wealth 
in store for the succeeding generations. But they be- 
lieved in the boundless productiveness of the soil, and 
indulged visions of remuneration for their toil of a kind 
and degree destined never to be realized. They were, 
indeed, a deeply religious people. They were Puritans 
without being fanatics. They were Congregationalists 
and Calvinists. It is evident, however, as well from 
their church covenant as from the dissensions and differ- 
ences of opinion which arose within a few years, that 
they held the tenets of their creed with liberality and a 
tolerant spirit, and with some conception of the rights of 
others, as well as their own, to private judgment in mat- 
ters spiritual. They were, for the age in which they 
lived, progressive. I am strongly inclined to think that 
there was a greater degree of liberality of views among 
the original settlers in respect to religious matters at 
first than later. After the divisions which arose in 
1745 and 1746 in regard to Mr. Prentice, the first pas- 
tor, that happened which usually happens in case of re- 
ligious schism. Each sect draws the lines of its peculiar 
belief more rigidly than before, and the minor differences 
which occasioned the division become the principal and 
sacred essentials of doctrine. 

At any rate, we know that the church creed was re- 
vised and made more definitely Calvinistic under the 



21 

second minister, Mr. Hutchinson, in accordance with the 
views of that very able and most logical and uncom- 
promising sectarian. That these people were of a cour- 
ageous disposition, worthy of their ancestors and of their 
posterity, needs no evidence to verify. They inherited 
from their fathers the courage of warriors, and it is not 
unlikely that some of the first founders of the town had 
faced the enemy in battle. The war of the Spanish suc- 
cession, or Queen Anne's war, which broke out in 1702, 
and continued a number of years, so far as this country 
is concerned, fell with especial fury upon the colony of 
Massachusetts Bay. The neutrality of the Five Nations 
protected New York and the central colonies. The prov- 
ince of Massachusetts Bay was desolated, and for her 
(says Bancroft) " the history of the war is but a cata- 
logue of miseries." 

All along the borders of Maine, then a part of Massa- 
chusetts, the cloud of war hung black as death. And, 
nearer home, Deerfield was burnt and its inhabitants 
massacred in 1704, and Haverhill shared the same fate in 
1708. For eleven years the war raged till the treaty of 
Utrecht in 1713. The troubles respecting the eastern 
boundaries of the province, which arose about 1720, with 
the tribe of Abenaki Indians, lasted about four years, 
and the Indians who had embraced the Catholic faith 
under the teachings of the Jesuit Rasles, waged a war 
with Massachusetts, animated on both sides with much 
religious zeal (a circumstance which does not often mit- 
igate the severities of war), which resulted in the suc- 
cess of our colony. These conflicts may have engaged 



22 

the personal participation of some of our settlers, and at 
any rate had made tliem familiar with the wrinkled front 
of grim-visaged war from their youth. 

We can know but little of the personal appearance 
and daily life of these ancient pioneers, who first bore 
into your fair territory the seeds of civilized life. jSTo 
photographer's art has preserved the lineaments of a sin- 
gle face. For the most part they were too poor to em- 
ploy the brush of a painter to fix on the canvas the fleet- 
ing lines of their features, even if an artist had ever vis- 
ited the region. I am bound to believe, however, that 
the men were of well-knit and vigorous frames, and pos- 
sessed of no small share of manly beauty, and the 
women well endowed with the comely graces and endear- 
ing charms of their sex. If asked the grounds of this 
belief, standing among the descendants who bear their 
features by inheritance, I should answer ^^8i monumen- 
tum quaeris, circumspicey If you want the proof look 
about you. It would be instructive and curious, if time 
permitted, to go into an examination of their daily lives, 
as afl'ected by the implements, appliances and facilities 
they could command in the performance of their labor, 
and in providing the necessities of existence. 

We, who live in this age of curious inventions and 
elegant devices of convenience, designed and adapted to 
facilitate labor and render delightful domestic life, can 
with difiiculty realize the rude and scanty tools and im- 
plements and barren facilities with which they prose- 
cuted the labors of the house and farm. In the article of 
dress, if we had the power to recall and materialize the 



23 

ancient worthies who assembled in yonder old meeting- 
house one hundred and fifty years ago ; if we could look 
in upon them as through a window, what a source of in- 
finite amusement and interest their quaint figures would 
excite ! 

A brilliant writer, describing a period fifty years later, 
gives a lively picture of the dress of the ISTew-England 
farmer: "If the food of such a man was plain so were his 
clothes. Indeed, his wardrobe would by his descendants 
be thought scanty in the extreme. For meeting on a 
Sabbath and on state occasions during the week, he had 
a suit of broadcloth or corduroy, which lasted him a life- 
time, and was at length bequeathed, little the worse for 
wear, with his cattle and his farm, to his son. The suit in 
which his neighbors commonly saw him, the suit in which 
he followed the plough, tended the cattle and dozed 
in the chimney corner, while Abigail or Comfort read to 
him from Edwards's Sermons, was of homespun or lin- 
sey-woolsey." * I am inclined to think this picture 
would be applicable to the farmers who settled Grafton, 
after deducting the broadcloth, corduro}', and Edwards's 
Sermons. And yet they were by no means destitute of 
all ideas of refinement, and most of them had seen 
glimpses of some of the elegancies of life. 

It is quite likely that after a few years, at least, on 
the Sabbath and important occasions, some of the more 
well-to-do among them may have displayed garments 
more attractive than the ordinary sheepskin, deerskin, 
or coarse knee-breeches and frock. Some of the ladies 



* McMaster's Hist, of the People of the United States, vol. 1, pages 18, 19. 



24 

may even have possessed a gown of silk. At any rate 
we shall presently see that there was one such garment 
in town. The periwig, which so scandalized the clergy 
of the preceding century, had established itself in fashion, 
and doubtless might have been seen here early, if not at 
the very first. Their education was not contemptible, 
as the records of their proceedings amply show. They 
had had the benefit of the long-established policy of the 
colony, which made public education the corner-stone of 
the State. They were familiar with Scripture and familiar 
with learned preaching. One of the conditions of their 
grant was that they should maintain a learned Orthodox 
minister. They complied with the condition by calling 
and settling in December, 1731, the Rev. Solomon Pren- 
tice, a young graduate of Harvard in the class of 1727, 
a classmate of Governors Hutchinson of Massachusetts 
Bay and Trumbull of Connecticut. 

In the following year the young minister married 
Sarah Sartell of Groton, and his wife, sixteen years of 
age, is said to have been well qualified by her learning 
and ability to assume the important position of a pastor's 
wife. I have unmistakable evidence that even in those 
rude and primitive days, in the infancy of the settle- 
ment, the minister's wife was not wholly unacquainted 
with, nor indiff'erent to, the elegancies of refined life. 
For, among my heirlooms, I possess an ample fragment 
of an elegant dress which was the property of that lady. 
One tradition in the family describes it as her own wed- 
ding dress, but the better authenticated account is that 
it came from an aunt of hers, and was worn by its 



25 

former owner at the Court of George TI. However that 
may be, it was undoubtedly worn by the fair hidy her- 
self, who was, I imagine, as well by her position as by 
her accomplishments, the leader of society here in those 
primitive days. As I look upon its beautiful texture, 
as perfectly preserved as when, one hundred and fifty 
years ago, it graced the person of the youthful lady, 
when I see its unfaded and lovely hues, — a bright ca- 
nary-colored satin elegantly brocaded with flowers, — I 
am struck with the transitory nature of the things we 
here pursue. By the aid of this talisman I am enabled 
to look into the — 

" Dark backward and abysm of time," 

and behold one of the figures that moved over these 
scenes when the curtain of history first rolled up and 
disclosed this section of the world's stage. For nearly 
a hundred years, after a long life, the mother and grand- 
mother of a numerous posterity, she has slept in yonder 
ancient cemetery. There remain of her memory only a 
few fleeting and uncertain traditions, scarcely more in 
extent than the nearly obliterated inscription upon her 
tombstone. All the rest has fallen silent and is swal- 
lowed up in oblivion, but the frail and beautiful adorn- 
ment which set ofi' the charms of the stately young min- 
ister's wife remains. :N"o shade of the cunningly- wrought 
desio-n has become, in the least, dimmed with age. Every 
line of the delicate tracery, and every lovely variation 
of color, lives as clear as on the day it left the loom. 
Venerable ancestress! I salute you across the gulf of 



26 

years ! Is it possible to believe that this delicate fabric, 
this tegument which became so intimately connected 
with her destiny, is all that survives of her, that all the 
rest is exhaled like the perfume of the flowers which 
bloomed a hundred years ago? No! at least she and 
her contemporaries, whose lives we are now trying to 
recall, live in the beneficent influence they exerted. It 
is not alone by hereditary transmission that the qualities 
and peculiarities of one generation reappear in another. 
We are creatures of imitation. The manners and indi- 
vidual peculiarities of a strong personality are repro- 
duced by force of the instinct to imitate; and as some 
individuals of every generation are contemporaries of 
the next succeeding, the traits and habits of a vigorous 
and original character are continued and transmitted 
from age to age. The frail memorial, the curiously 
wrought fabric, is but a symbol of the graces of per- 
sonal character which do not perish even from this life, 
when the tenement of clay dissolves, but survive — 

"To the last s\'llal)le of recorded time." * 

The pastoral relation of Mr. Prentice was dissolved 
in 1747, by reason of troubles which had been brewing 
for two or three years. I do not propose to enter upon 
the subject of those troubles. It is enough to say that 
no impeachment of the integrity of Mr. Prentice was 



* I regret that a story so destitute of probability as that relating to the do- 
mestic discord between Mr. and Mrs. Prentice, wliich Mr. Howe deemed wor- 
thy of a place in his excellent address, should have received an indorsement 
so respectable. The frequency with which the story has been applied to an- 
cient couples, who were divided in opinion upon the special tenet of the Bap- 
tists, renders it quite too stale for adaptation to the cultivated and refined 
tirst pastor of Grafton, and his intelligent and spirited wife. 



27 

attempted, but it was his orthodoxy alone which was 
brought in question. It is essential for me to say that 
the records of this controversy, faithfully set down in 
the beautiful handwriting of Mr. Prentice himself, dis- 
closes a people of great independence of thought and 
character, desirous to do right, but by no means to be 
deterred by authority from asserting their just privi- 
leges and opinions. Mr. Prentice was succeeded by 
Rev. Aaron Hutchinson, a man of great power and 
great eccentricities, who remained till 1772, and, in 
1774, Rev. Daniel Grosvenor succeeded him. A lady 
friend of mine has given me a brace of anecdotes told 
to her by Mr. Grosvenor himself, one of which well illus- 
trates his sense of the humorous and his dislike of insin- 
cerity. 

Mr. Grosvenor was dining with a lady of his parish, 
who was a cook of exquisite skill, and she placed before 
the pastor a delicious pie, of some kind, and as she 
helped him to a piece of it, she remarked that she hoped 
he would accept a piece of her jpoor pie. The minister 
tasted it with great gravity, and said "Poor pie! why, I 
call it a very passahle pie." Whereupon the good lady 
was in high dudgeon. She declared she never took 
more pains with a pie, in the whole course of her life, 
and she did not believe there was ever a better pie made. 
Fishing for a compliment, she got caught with her own 

hook. 

On another occasion the reverend gentleman called 
upon one of his parishoners, who, it l)eing upon a wash- 
ing day, and her dinner not being just what she would 



28 

desire to invite so august a personage as the minister to 
partake of, did not mean to extend to him the courtesy 
of an invitation. But the lady's mother, who was of the 
family, nevertheless, asked Mr. Grosvenor to stay. He 
accepted, and when his young hostess apologized for 
the quality of the repast, hei- mother made the follow- 
ing observation, which Mr. Grosvenor thought quite no- 
table. She said there was no occasion for any apology ; 
for, if Mr. Grosvenor was a good man^ he would be con- 
tent and thankful even with a poor dinner, and, if he 
was a bad man, it was good enough for him. 

I have read a sermon preached by Mr. Hutchinson at 
Newbury in 1767, and the reply by him to certain strict- 
ures thereon, by the Rev. John Tucker, pastor of the 
first church in Xewbury. This famous ecclesiastical 
controversy related to the necessity of infant l3aptism 
in order to insure salvation. It is hardly necessary 
to say that Mr. Hutchinson maintained the affirmative 
of that proposition. His discourses are marked by 
great familiarity with scriptural texts, much classical 
learning, fine controversial skill, and by a logic which 
may fairly be described as of deadly precision. Admit 
his premises, and you cannot escape his conclusions. 

Mr. Hutchinson, like his great contemporary Dr. Sam- 
uel Johnson, coupled with great learning and ability, 
the manners of a bear. The president of the day,* who 
is the repository of all the history and anecdotes con- 
nected with the antiquities of the town, relates a story 
of Mr. Hutchinson illustrating his manners: He was 

* Henry F. Willi?, Es(|., 



29 

dining at a conference of ministers and helped liimself 
to so large a portion of the pudding that there was little 
left on the platter. Thereupon one of his neighbors 
at the table helped himself from Mr. Hutchinson's plate, 
and when remonstrated with, remarked that he always 
helped himself from the largest pile. 

I do not find in the ancient records of the town, any- 
thing to show whether the young settlement contributed 
men to the expedition which resulted in the brilliant 
conquest of Louisburg in 1745. To this enterprise, 
which owed its conception and execution to the energy 
of Governor Shirley, this province contributed more 
than three thousand men, and it is probable that in the 
ranks were found some residents of this town. 

The treaty of Aix la Chapelle restored to the French 
the fortress which New-England valor had placed in 
English hands, and left the colonists to the long strug- 
gle which was in store for them, with their wily and 
cruel neighbors of the north ; and the first war, after the 
settlement of the town, which arose to try the mettle of 
the inhabitants, was the French war, in which hostilities 
broke out in 1754. I have already referred to Queen 
Anne's war of fifty years before. It is undoubtedly 
true that the protracted struggle of the English colo- 
nists with the French and Indians along our extended 
northern frontier, fi'om the mouth of the Saint Lawrence 
to the forks of the Ohio, furnished the training-school in 
which was raised the generation of soldiers who fought 
the battles of the Revolution. In the French war, 
Washington won his spurs, and many of the officers and 



30 

privates who met the British regulars on Bunker Hill, 
or penetrated the thick forests of Canada, and crossed 
the Saint Lawrence in canoes under the lead of Arnold 
and Montgomery, to attack Quebec, or joined in the at- 
tack on the Hessians at Trenton, or endured the pangs 
of famine and frost at Valley Foi-ge, had also, twenty 
years before, rushed upon the defences at Louisburg, or 
under the command of Wolfe, struggled up the cliffs to 
the Heights of Abraham, or marched with Washington 
through the dense forests of western Pennsylvania to 
the field of Braddock's defeat. To say that the record 
of this town in that long struggle was distinguished 
and honorable, is but to faintly praise where words of 
enthusiastic eulogy are appropriate. In a period of nine 
years, its population was more than decimated by the 
fatalities of that war. Such a record is of great and un- 
paralleled significance, and imports that here resided a 
race of heroic men, whose martial virtues were not infe- 
rior to any that ever inspired the strains of the lyric 
muse. In 1757, the fortunes of England in America 
reached their lowest ebb. For more than two years, 
disasters had huddled thick upon her arms. At Fort 
Du Quesne; at Oswego; at Fort William Henry, and 
throughout the whole of the Saint Lawrence valley, an 
almost unbroken succession of defeats had reduced her 
prospects here to the verge of despair. And, at home, 
the gloom which settled on the face of affairs was scarcely 
less deep and rayless than that of one hundred years 
before, when the guns of the Dutch fleet were heard in 
the Thames. It was at this moment that the elder Pitt, 



31 

the great commoner, seized the reins of power which 
fell from the nerveless grasp of the "Whig aristocracy." 
In less than fonr years, he restored the military glory 
of his country to the pitch it had attained by the genius 
of Marlborough, and gave to England an influence in 
the politics of the world which she had not enjoyed 
since the days of Oliver Cromwell. The most brilliant 
of the series of victories by which these results were 
accomplished was the conquest of Canada. To the con- 
quest of Canada, no portion of the British people con- 
tributed so much as the province of Massachusetts Bay, 
and no portion of the people of this province contribu- 
ted more of men and money according to their numbers 
than the people of the town of Grafton. 

When we read the astounding fact that eighty of her 
sons out of a population of 750 died in this war, we feel 
the intense meaning of Col. Barry's immortal speech in 
the house of commons: "They protected by your arms? 
They have nobly taken up arms in your defence ; have 
exerted a valor amid their constant and laborious indus- 
try, for the defence of a country whose frontier was 
drenched in Mood, while its interior yielded all its little 
savings to your emoluments." 

When we turn the leaf which embalms the deeds of this 
town in the war of the revolution, we find equal cause for 
pride and exultation. Grafton sent forth no conspicuous 
leader to the councils, and furnished no battlefield in 
that great debate. She contributed no Washington, no 
Adams, no Warren, no Ward, and it was not here that— 

"The embattled farmers stood 
And fired the shot heard round the world." 



32 

But no people in the colonies caught the echo of that 
shot with more quick and responsive ear. Before the 
sun had set on that 19th day of April, 1775, a full com- 
pany of nearly one hundred men, with Rev. Mr. Grosve- 
nor, their pastor, in the ranks, were in rapid march to 
the front. On every bloody field, from Bunker Hill to 
Yorktown, the sons of this town dared or tasted death 
in the cause of independence. But the contest of the 
American colonies of Great Britain with the mother 
country was not specially distinguished by the valor of 
the Continental troops. There was no deficiency in that 
respect, but there have been more remarkable instances 
of human courage and endurance than any displayed in 
that war. The long contest of the ^Netherlands with 
the mighty armaments of Spain, forty-three years in du- 
ration, recorded in the glowing and eloquent pages of 
Motley, presents an instance far more striking and won- 
derful of a brave people, in the sacred cause of liberty, 
maintaining an unequal contest through more than a 
generation, and carrying it to a triumphant issue against 
intrenched power and vast resources. It was not very 
wonderful that three million people, situated in a coun- 
try of such resources as this, and remote from Europe, 
especially in alliance with one of the great powers of the 
earth, should be able to wrest their independence from 
the mother country, whose people were not completely 
united in policy. But what is unexampled in this great 
contest, what the file affords absolutely no precedent 
for, was the calm and conservative wisdom which mark- 
ed all the councils of the revolt. The colonists were 



33 

not revohitionists indeed, but rather conservatives. 
They were not fighting to establish new relbrms, bnt to 
preserve ancient Uberties. They had no constitutions in 
the sense in which we use the term, and yet in all their 
public utterances and state papers they perpetually re- 
fer to their constitutions, and appeal to the principles of 
those constitutions. 

By their constitutions the people of this province meant 
the Magna Charta, the declaration of rights of 1G88, and 
the bill of rights of 1G89, and all that body of law found 
in the preambles of ancient statutes and in the decisions 
of courts, whereby the liberties of Englishmen were de- 
clared and secured everywhere. They believed those 
principles were embodied by necessary implication in the 
charter of 1629, and in the new charter of 1691. I cannot 
develop and must not stop to dwell on this topic. They 
were a race of constitutional lawyers. Burke said of 
them: "In this character of the Americans, a love of 
freedom is the predominating feature which marks and 
distinguishes the whole. This fierce spirit of liberty is 
stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any 
other people of the earth." And Chatham, in 1775, thus 
characterized their public papers: "When your lord- 
ships look at the papers transmitted to us from Amer- 
ica, when you consider their decency, firmness and wis- 
dom, you cannot but respect their cause and wish to 
make it your own. For myself I must declare and 
avow that in all my reading and observation — and it 
has been my favorite study — I have read Thucydides 
and have admired the master states of the world — that 



34 

for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity and wisdom 
of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult 
circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in 
preference to the general congress at Philadelphia." 
Now the same characteristics which marked the emana- 
tions of the greater bodies, and so much challenged the 
admiration of the great statesman, will be found in less 
degree in the humble records of the proceedings of the 
New England towns. I have adverted to this subject 
to say that right here, in the volumes containing the 
proceedings of this town in 1774 and '75, will be found 
undying evidence of the existence here of that " fierce 
spirit of liberty" which Burke discovered, coupled with 
the temperate wisdom and practical sagacity which com- 
manded the applause of Chatham. A single illustration 
is all I can allow myself. I refer to the report of a com- 
mittee adopted by the town, January 4, 1774, and hav- 
ing reference to a communication from Boston, sent out 
upon the occasion of the destruction of tea in Boston har- 
bor. Tt is in these words : " The town of Grafton, tak- 
ing into consideration the unhappy circumstances that 
this country are involved in at the present crisis, attempts 
being repeatedly made infringing upon our rights and 
privileges, which we consider justly alarming to all the 
true friends of our happy constitution, which hath been 
80 dearly purchased, and which we esteem to be our 
most invaluable interest and rights as Englishmen, 
which we have ever gloried in, more particularly at the 
glaring injustice of the East India Company being 
allowed to send tea to America, while subject to a duty 



35 

payable in America, which we view as subversive of 
our rights as Christians; as subjects, and as loyal sub- 
jects of our most gracious King George, whose name 
and person we ever desire to view as sacred. Therefore, 
Resolved, as the people of this town, that any one indi- 
vidual, or any body of men, that shall encourage, aid, 
or assist in importing or receiving any such tea or any 
other article while subject to a duty, the sole purpose 
whereof is to raise money to appropriate to any sordid 
measure, or any use whatever contrary to our just rights 
of distributing our own property wherewith God and 
Nature hath made us free, can but be viewed as crimi- 
nal to our country, as well as to the mother state, and 
must be so viewed by us. Resolved, that this town 
are in duty bound to join with and assist our sister 
towns and colonies in this our common cause, so as we 
may be instrumental under God of handing down that 
liberty to our posterity which hath been kept so long 
inviolate and preserved by our worthy ancestors. Re- 
solved, that the substance of the proceedings of the 
town of Boston and other towns in their respective 
town meetings (relative to said affair) which have been 
published and come to our knowledge, are in our appre- 
hension consistent with truth and our happy constitu- 
tion, and we can but wish prosperity may attend all 
laudable stands, so that our glorious constitution may 
yet be handed down to posterity inviolate. But to 
adopt any measures where private advantage or sinister 
ends are apparently at the bottom, and who make 
this thous:h ever so glorious a foundation for their 



36 

avarice and e^nolument we cannot but must detest and 
abhor." 

The syntax of this document will not bear examina- 
tion, but the record presents an interesting type of the 
class of the counsels that prevailed everywhere. It 
exhibits in the sons the same characteristics which pre- 
dominated in the fathers who settled the town — clear, 
practical common sense, a people who knew their rights 
and the exact extent and limits and grounds of them ; 
a people who believed that liberty was not an abstrac- 
tion but inhered in a sensible object — a people who 
could not be surprised nor driven into vain excesses, 
and who proposed as their ancestors had done, to gov- 
ern themselves, but by no means to commit society to 
any untried and dangerous theories of abstract rights, 
that rested not upon the solid basis of precedent. But 
our ancestors were not always right. What Emerson 
said of Concord is true of Grafton, '^ If the good coun- 
sel prevailed, the sneaking counsel did not fail to be 
suggested." You will find if you search the musty 
records, that while most of the men whose blood Hows 
in your veins were staunch in the just cause, others of 
your ancestors, perhaps, were obstinate, obstructive and 
wrong-headed. If the question came up on paying the 
minute-men for the time they spent in learning the mili- 
tary art and for their accoutrements, you may find some 
of your kindred, whose names you would prefer not to 
see in that conspicuous eminence, sullenly protesting 
against the scheme, perhaps suspicious that it savored 
too much of "measures where private advantage and 



37 

sinister ends were at the bottom." But tories were ex- 
ceeding scarce, and although I find an honored name of 
one who was cashiered as agent to procure recruits for 
the town, "because he was not firm and friendly to the 
State," yet I believe he was restored within a few 
months- And you know that when the question of the 
adoption of the United States constitution came up, the 
people of this town and vicinity, concurring with the mis- 
taken views of many veteran patriots of the Revolution, 
rejected by a very large majority that Union which, in 
the next age, their posterity were destined so gloriously 
to defend. I have left myself no time, nor was it a part 
of my design, to enter upon any consideration of Graf- 
ton's relation to the war for the Union. If the record 
of fatalities did not reach the unparalleled extent of the 
old French war, the roll of your volunteers was swelled 
far beyond every requirement of the government. For 
nearly every eight men your quota called for, you fur- 
nished, out of the abundance of your patriotism, an ad- 
ditional man. 

Your eminence in this particular received ample rec- 
ognition from the commonwealth, when its chief magis- 
trate said, in measured words : " I feel bound in truth 
and justice to say that no other town appears to have 
contributed to the late war a larger proportion than 
yours of its treasures and its men." I am speaking to 
those who helped to make the record. I know how ap- 
propriate the theme is; but I could not adequately treat 
it. To what examples of ancient or modern valor could 
I refer to set in more striking light your own ? The 



38 

mind reverts to Marathon ; to Platea ; and to the pass in 
the Locrian mountains, where the three hundred Spar- 
tans with their few alUes, held at bay a million barbari- 
ans. 

The literature and art of twenty-five centuries has in- 
vested these examples of heroism with imperishable 
glory. l!^o immortal literature has yet wrought its spell 
upon your deeds. The long arts of sculpture and paint- 
ing have not familiarized the eyes of seventy genera- 
tions with your achievements. Perhaps the conditions 
under which you and your comrades wrought and en- 
dured are not favorable to the representations of art, 
and the Achilles of the civil war may never find his 
Homer. But I know of nothing in the quality of your 
valor, in the circumstances under which it was display- 
ed, in the motives which actuated it, or in the results it 
achieved, to belittle it in comparison with the classic 
models of antiquity. The Greeks, trained in war from 
their infancy, on those renowned fields, confronted a foe 
formidable only in numbers, to preserve for a few pre- 
cious decades a small tract of mountainous country, until 
their genius might create and transmit to other ages 
and other races a body of wonderful literature, monu- 
ments of unequalled art, and examples of politics and 
governments, of the highest interest to mankind. You 
fought without previous military training, against an 
equal foe, in the cause of human liberty, inspired with 
a lofty sentiment of national integrity, and to the end, 
in the immortal language of Lincoln, " that government 
of the people, by the people, for tlie people, might not 



39 

perish from the earth." To quote the language of your 
great military chieftain, addressed to you at the close, 
" Your marches, sieges and battles, in distance, duration, 
resolution, and brilliancy of results, dim the lustre of 
the world's past military achievements, and will be the 
patriot's precedent in defence of liberty and the right in 
all time to come." 

I have said the first settlers of the town were re- 
markable for their sturdy sense and practical business 
capacity, and for these their descendants have continued 
to be distinguished. It would be invidious to name the 
living, and difficult to select, for special mention, from 
the long roll of Grafton's sons who have united with a 
lofty spirit of patriotism the practical wisdom of men of 
affairs. They are found, in no insignificant numbers, in 
the ranks of those by whom the great business interests 
of the country are managed. Of profound and brilliant 
scholars, of eminent statesmen and orators, the town has 
no list to present. In the main, heretofore, the genius 
her children have displayed is the genius of honest in- 
dustry, perseverance, courage, Yankee sense, the ca- 
pacity to gain solid acquirements, and to use them about 
the practical business of life, the genius of the true arti- 
sans who have wrought out the great material progress 
and prosperity of the age. And if the past of the town 
is secure, the present and future are also luminous with 
hope and promise. It is true that causes, which need 
not be enumerated, tend to mass population about great 
industrial centres, and the country town suffers an ap- 
parent diminution of importance. If it is a question of 



40 

valuation for the purposes of taxation; if it is a question 
of comparative gain of population ; if it is a question of 
relative municipal importance, your town has lost the 
race. But the true worth of a town is not measured by 
its valuation list, any more than the true wealth of a 
man is measured by his weight avoirdupois. When the 
New York Sun wanted to say the most disparaging 
thing it could think of about General Hancock, it said 
he was a good man and weighed 250 pounds. If it is a 
question what opportunities are here afforded to lead a 
rational existence ; to appreciate intelligently the great 
pageant of human life as it moves before the eye; to 
cultivate and expand your own powers; to furnish the 
minds of your children with correct opinions, and fill 
their hearts with noble sentiments; in short, to enjoy all 
the blessings of civil liberty, at what period of Grafton's 
history were her prospects more attractive? In 1735, 
Grafton was what it had been in the days of Hubbard, 
"a place up into the woods beyond Mcdfield and 
Mendon." 

The Grafton of 1885 is near the centre of a republic 
of fifty-five millions of people. The distance of your 
fathers of the year 1800 from their rural county seat was 
greater than yours, at present, from the great city, then 
a straggling town, now a vast mart of trade and the 
" mother of arts and eloquence." Taking into account 
the conveniences and comforts of modern methods of 
travel, as well as the element of time, you are nearer to 
New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, than your 
fathers were to their provincial capital. " No pent up 



41 

Utica contracts your powers, but the whole boundless 
continent is yours." And it is yours in other senses 
than that it is accessible. The old charters of Charles, 
and of William and Mary, granted to the province of 
Massachusetts Bay all the land lying between a north 
line three miles north of the Merrimack and a south 
line three miles south of the Charles, and extending 
westward to the South Sea. There was an unconscious 
prophecy in the vague terms of the ancient grants. 
The royal grantors could deliver but a small part of the 
vast region they covered by the premises of their parch- 
ment. But what the royal signet could not give title to 
the grantees and their children have, nevertheless, pos- 
sessed. The great West is but a larger ^ew England 
and a more distinguished Massachusetts. Even the 
great South, so long shut up against the influence of 
your free institutions, beholds the coming day. Even 
there, — 

" Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on tlie misty mountain tops." 

The new South means a South which shall yield to 
the genial influences of New England, such as our fath- 
ers planted here and which have created the greatness 
of the N^orth and the West. Meanwhile, over your no- 
ble hills and through your lovely valleys, "Heaven's 
breath smells wooingly," your ample fields have not 
sensibly abated their fertility, and your thriving villages 
are vigorous as of old. Your model free schools and your 
noble library open wide their portals and extend their 
inestimable benefits to the rich and poor alike. No 

5 



42 

child is born within your borders in circumstances so 
abject and miserable that the beneficent institutions you 
have established and maintain will not unlock at the bid- 
ding of his diligence and ability, every door that leads 
to wealth and honorable fame. Standing at the apex of 
the second century, reverting to the past and peering 
into the future, we can discover only reasons for pro- 
found gratitude to the founders of the ancient town, and 
to their heroic successors in every generation, who have 
preserved for us so noble a heritage. 



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014 078 487 4 



